Showscan

Showscan is a cinematic process developed by Douglas Trumbull. It uses 70mm film, but photographs and projects it at 60 frames per second – 2.5 times the standard speed of movie film.

History

Trumbull had first come to the public's attention for his work on the ground-breaking special effects in movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Andromeda Strain, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He also directed 1972's Silent Running, widely considered a classic of 1970s film science fiction.

The Showscan Film process was developed in the late '70s and early '80s by Trumbull, when he became interested in increasing the fidelity or definition of movies. Similar to the quality issues addressed later by high-definition television, the then-state of the art of movies suffered from the limitations of the medium. When projected onto a large screen, the film grain of 35 mm film stock is often quite visible, which reduces the quality of the displayed image, a problem further exacerbated by the larger grain used in the fast film stock often used to capture high-speed action. Trumbull chose a 65 mm film stock for his new process to address this, providing a higher resolution image.